A Gated Graph Neural Network Approach to Fast-Convergent Dynamic Average Estimation

Abstract

Dynamic average estimation is a critical problem in multi-agent systems, enabling agents to collaboratively estimate time-varying signals using only local information exchange. Traditional model-based approaches often face challenges related to convergence speed and sensitivity to network topology changes. This paper introduces a novel learning-based solution leveraging Gated Graph Neural Networks (GGNNs) for fast-convergent dynamic average estimation in a fully distributed manner. Taking advantage of the inherent structure of GGNNs, the proposed method models the estimation process as a distributed autoregressor, ensuring rapid convergence while maintaining stability. We incorporate a regularization term during training to enforce convergence guarantees and introduce an encoding-decoding mechanism to reduce communication overhead without sacrificing accuracy compared to standard GGNNs. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms conventional model-based estimators in terms of both convergence speed and precision, making it a promising alternative for multi-agent applications that require dynamic average estimation.